$5 Decorating: Accessorizing with Thrift Store Finds

Sometimes a few thrift store accessories can help spruce up a space for very little moolah!  Here are a few pieces I have bought at the local thrift store for no more than $3 each!



One of my most beloved accessories is this brass swan I grabbed from the thrift store for $2.50.  It was a bit of a splurge, but she has already moved around the house a few times & looks good just about anywhere!



I grabbed the white vase above for just a few dollars too.  Thrift stores seem to be full of glass & ceramic vases that once held live floral arrangements.



This little urn was less than two dollars.  All it needed was a quick wash & it was ready for it’s new home.  (By the way, that flamingo picture was a free printable in a document frame from Dollar Tree!  You've got to love $1 art!)



I also love this pretty bowl that was only fifty cents!  I really wish I would have bought the other ones, since the colors would look good in pretty much every room in our house!

What are some of your favorite items to buy from thrift stores?

$5 Decorating: Adding Art

Since most of us don’t get paid to decorate, it’s always great to have some inexpensive ideas we can use to update our homes & fill our creative outlets!  For the past week, I have been sharing small updates I have made to our home, using only $5 or less.  I decided to look back over my archives & share a few cheap & easy ways we can add art to our homes.



Believe it or not, I printed these pretty botanical prints (above) for free from Vintage Printable.  The 11x14 frames were only about $10 for a set of two, but a lot of times you can find them on sale or use a 40% off coupon!  I grabbed some mats while I was there.  Of course, to stay under $5 for a picture like this, you could use an existing frame or buy a cheap frame from a thrift store & make your own mats out of poster board.  You can find the original post about these prints here.



I used Vintage Printable again, to print this bird picture for the mantel.  I stuck it in a frame I already had on hand & it helped brighten up the look of our mantel.



I used more of those inexpensive frames & mats from Michaels to frame pictures from a children’s book for the kids’ shared bathroom.  I just checked out the book from the library, made some colored copies, & stuck them in the frames, for free art!



A cheap Ikea frame + a free printable from Paper Coterie = a happy reminder to be happy & an adorable little spot on my desk!

There are a vast amount of resources for free & affordable “art” for your homes!  Not only can you frame free images from the Internet (please, make sure they are really meant to be free…) & pages from books & magazines, but you can also frame postcards, greeting cards, notes, kiddy artwork, calendar pages, shopping bags, scrapbook or wrapping paper, fabric…  (I could go on & on!)  I do have some other sources of affordable art on my pinterest board if you’d like to take a look!

So, do you have any sources for affordable art?  I’d love to hear them!

$5 Decorating: House Warming Gift

If you haven’t heard of the new Waterlogue app, you must be living under a rock!  I’m pretty sure every home décor blog has been singing it’s praises for the last couple of weeks!  It is an app only available for Apple products that converts photos into watercolors.  We usually don’t spend money on apps, but for $2.99, I figured this app could help create endless amounts of cheap artwork for our home, so we splurged! 

A couple of months ago Evie pulled our Canela Tree out of the pot, ending in a plant fatality. 



I decided not to replace the plant, since the area gets very little sunlight, & instead wanted to add artwork to the space.  I found a couple of pictures of our first home & our current home & decided to play around with the app.  Here are the “before” & “afters”.









After picking up a couple of $5 11x14 frames (with mats) from Wal-Mart, here they are in the entry:





I think this idea not only makes for great, cheap “art,” but it would also make a great housewarming gift or going away present!  (Not to mention, it would be great for making easy cards as well!)

So, are you obsessed with this app yet?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Since I totally decided to slack off this year & have no original Valentine ideas to share, I thought I would share some links from the past few years.

This is a quick synopsis of how we usually spend Valentine’s Day.



Here are the Valentine’s we made one year.



Mark & I celebrated Valentine's Day last weekend, since our church hosted a free babysitting night, but we will celebrate with the kids tonight.  I always like to get the kids a little gift for Valentine’s day too, so this year, Zeke is getting a video game (for our original X-Box, so it’s a cheap one!), Elie is getting the Frozen soundtrack, & Evie is getting some stickers & a little teddy bear.  Of course, we’ll be eating dinner by candle light & eating our heart shaped jello jigglers too!

So, what do you do for Valentine’s Day?   You can find more great ideas on my "Be My Valentine?" pinterest board!

$5 Decorating: Making Pillows from Dinner Napkins

Since I have about $0 to spend on decorating right now, I have been planning ahead for purchases I want to make as soon as we pay a few big bills.  In particular, I have been searching for pillow fabrics for the living room.  I think I finally have it narrowed down. 



I plan on keeping the chevron & white fur pillows on the couch, but will hopefully be ditching the small fuchsia pillows for larger ones in this fabric. 

I decided to add some solid turquoise pillows to the zebra chairs & totally remembered, during my online window shopping session, that I had purchased a set of turquoise cloth napkins from Ikea.  (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find them online.)  I’m pretty sure I spent between 4- 5 dollars on the set.  After a quick treasure hunt, I sewed the napkins together & had a cheap set of pillows.  (I just used some old inserts to fill them.)



Pretty nice for only $2.50 each!



I plan on using this fabric on the chairs in front of the window (that I have yet to re-cover) which will tie the blue, pink/coral colors together hopefully!

So, do you have any $5 decorating secrets?  I’d love to hear them & maybe even feature them on the blog!

$5 Decorating: Updating Framed Photos

The beginning of the year is always hard on us financially.  We get hit up with some expensive bills this time of year (auto & home insurance, as well as our property taxes) & money is tight.  For the past couple of weeks I have been dreaming of making some changes to our family room & morning room & have honestly felt slightly depressed that I couldn't act on any of those changes until our money situation loosens up a bit. 

As I sat staring at Pinterest & looking back at my goals for this year, I realized there were some small, inexpensive updates I could make that would at least help get me out of my funk.  (First world problems, I know…)  Anyway, I've put together a little series I’m calling $5 Decorating & today we’re talking photos!



The back wall of our morning room held messy faced pictures of my two oldest children when they were younger.  Now that our baby is nearing two, I felt it was finally time to add her mug to this little photo gallery.  I started this little update by re-painting the frames black with some paint I already had on hand.  Next, I ordered a black & white print of my youngest child on her first birthday, & a picture of my husband & I cutting the cake on our wedding day & plopped them in the frames.



I changed up the accessories on the side table a while ago, using items we already had on hand- a thrift store lamp, tray with some devotional books for the kids, a cheap Ikea bowl I diy’d, & some candle sticks.



It’s so nice to know that just a little time & money can actually update the appearance of a space! 

So, do you have any frames you need to update?  It’s such an easy task, but one that I almost always put off!